


time, mystical time

by meganseverafter



Series: in the end, all our stories are folklore [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meganseverafter/pseuds/meganseverafter
Summary: Sometimes Rose thinks about fate and the universe’s will.
Relationships: Jackie Tyler & Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler/Pete Tyler, Jimmy Stone/Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith/Rose Tyler, hints of past Eleventh Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: in the end, all our stories are folklore [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852807
Kudos: 17





	time, mystical time

Sometimes Rose thinks about fate and the universe’s will. 

When she was young, still as bright eyed as a kid on the council estates can be, she’d have her mum tell her about her dad. How brilliant he was, his daft ideas he was sure would work, how he could make anyone smile. When she’d go to bed those nights, she’d wonder why the universe would take away a man so brilliant. How fate could take away a soulmate from a mum who was doing her best. How did the universe justify a girl never knowing her father? 

She gets a bit older and puberty hits her like it hits everyone and she starts to wonder about what the universe has in store for her. If fate would be kinder to her than it was her mother, who was doing her best even if she brought a new man around every other month, saying he was just a mate of hers. Pete Tyler was her mother’s soulmate as far as Rose was concerned but, even at her early teens, Rose was jaded enough to know that soulmates aren’t good enough if they’re not _there_. 

She’s thirteen when she has her first kiss, hidden behind the tree off the side of the playground near the estates where she’d been told two years prior “it isn’t ladylike to climb trees, Rose” by her mother. Michael’s lips taste like the beef jerky he had at lunch and it’s all a bit more slobbery than she’d pictured based on the books she’d read and the romcoms she watched with her mum. She lied when asked though, said it was “magical” because that’s what everyone said it would be. And people said you could will the universe to your preference if you spoke it into existence. Something about “manifesting the future you want”. Rose wasn’t sure what Margie down in 2B meant by that, and she wasn’t sure if she put much faith in it because her mum said once that Margie is a “daft hippie”, but it can’t hurt to try and get the universe on your side, can it?

She swears that her science teacher is more than he lets on, with all his gangly limbs and chaotic energy hidden under a bowtie and suspenders. There’s a loneliness in his eyes that remind her of her mum and she wonders who he lost. She wonders about the universe and fate every time Mr. Smith smiles that same sad, longing smile she thinks is only for her despite never doing anything with the man aside from asking him to explain what the hell he means because she was never any good at science but it almost makes sense when he’s explaining it to her. But then Mrs. Pritchett is back from maternity leave and she doesn’t see Mr. Smith again.

It’s her sixteenth birthday when she meets Jimmy Stone for the first time. Oh, she’d heard about him, of course. Every breathing female on the estates had. The older women said he was nothing but trouble. The little girls thought his guitar was neat because, if he was in a good mood, he’d play them a little nonsense song he’d just made up. The teen girls all comprehensively agreed he was the dreamiest guy they’d ever seen on the estates and that whoever managed to lock him down would be the luckiest girl alive. At nineteen, Jimmy Stone was relatively handsome with one of those smirks that naive girls thought was hot enough to make their panties drop but made experienced women walk far away. He was the lead singer and guitarist of a mediocre band that relied too much on their looks to make them seem better than they were.

Rose thought the universe was giving her a bit of retribution for her relatively shitty hand in life when Jimmy sauntered up to kiss her on the cheek with a flirty, “Happy birthday, baby. Call me sometime”, while his hand slipped his number in her back pocket. 

In the beginning, dating Jimmy felt like Rose thought it was supposed to. She was flying high on his kiss and everyone’s jealousy, too far up to care about her mother’s warnings. She’d heard her grandparents’ comments under their breath about her father, how they never liked him, how they thought Pete - a brilliant man with dreams bigger than his situation - wasn’t good enough for their Jackie. So, Rose took her mother’s warnings and threw them in her face. Took everything bad she’d ever heard Gran and Grandad Prentice say about her father and about Jackie’s choices and yelled them at her mother, claiming she was just saying the same things as them, that she didn’t want Rose to have her soulmate just because _she_ didn’t. 

Rose spent her seventeenth birthday in a gross club watching Jimmy play his set before going home to their crappy apartment, listening to him whisper promises of his impending fame and fortune and their happiness pressed as kisses to her bare shoulder before she fell asleep to go to work the next day. 

Sometimes she thinks she sees men watching her, different from how men _usually_ watch her. It’s not _leering_ in the way she’s known since her boobs started forming and she started wearing lip gloss to emphasize her full lips. There’s a sense of safety when she spots the man in the long blue coat with his dark hair and fond smile with bright blue eyes only ever for her though she never gets to speak to him. There’s a thrill when she sees the skinny man in a blue suit with _really_ great hair but the saddest eyes she’s ever seen who is always gone in the blink of an eye. She thinks of them as the protection the universe sent for her as she starts to realize that maybe her mum was on to something when she had her complaints about Jimmy. 

Rose spends her eighteenth birthday alone in a dirty flat unsure where Jimmy is and what fate was playing at if this is what having a soulmate is. She dropped out of school for this boy, she left her mum for him, has gone into debt for him, and hasn’t seen him in a week. Rent is due on Monday and she’s pretty sure she’s not going to be able to make it, and that’s assuming she even still wants to be here. 

By Sunday night, she’s curled up in her mother’s arms, sobbing apologies and vowing against men altogether. Though when she sees the man in the long coat’s proud smile and wink the next day, she feels like maybe she finally pleased the universe with her choice. It helps too that Mickey brings her lunch and says some crazy bloke in a blue suit with hair standing off his head insisted on paying for both of their meals from her favorite chippy. Maybe fate isn’t so bad. 

She dates Mickey because it feels like that’s what she’s supposed to do. He’s kind, and present, and doesn’t expect more from her than to watch football at the local with him and maybe let him get her into bed every once and a while. It’s nice in a simple way, even though she can’t imagine that _this_ is all her life is supposed to be. Football games and work and the local gossip. She’s certain she’s made for more than this, but she doesn’t have a clue how she’s supposed to make it out of here. 

It’s New Year’s when she sees him next, the man in the blue suit, wearing that long brown coat of his. She doesn’t recognize him at first, hidden in the shadows as he is. Assumes he’s just had too much to drink until she looks a bit closer at him as she tells him the date. He’s wearing a brown suit this time she thinks, though it’s hard to tell with the lighting. It’s the first time he’s ever spoken to her in all the times she’s ever seen him, though he’s not normally this close either. She thinks about asking why he pops up and watches her from afar, but then he’s informing her that she’s going to have a “really great year” and she takes that as the universe promising something. It’s enough for her not to ask questions now, though she runs back to the flat to make sure she doesn’t slip up. Wouldn’t do to ruin what favor the universe might be bestowing on her so early in the year.


End file.
